Barney's Blog

Totalitarianism and Technology

Julian Assange has been assaulted on all sides by the British, Swedish and U.S. government, and pundits on TV, radio and the blogosphere.

I'm not going to raise a reader ruckus backing or dismissing Assange. Instead I'm going to lay out some provocative points he recently made and let you comment (by writing to dbarney@redmondmag.com).

According to a recent interview, Assange believes technology is allowing governments to find out what all of us are doing, and has a broad and deep view of Internet activity through sophisticated monitoring. This type of insight equals control, and would enable totalitarianism. In his view, technology can "intercept entire nations."

The U.S. has had the ability to gather/intercept vast amounts of information here and throughout the world. With a technology trickle down, the same is possible for smaller countries such as Libya, he argues.

And we allow this to happen by giving so much of ourselves through Facebook and other means.

What do you make of all this? Free flow of ideas welcome at dbarney@redmondmag.com.